Political Perceptions: A Grouchy, Whiny Grumbling Debate?

Here’s a summary of the smartest new political analysis on the web:By Sara Murray and Gerald F. Seib

The reviews are in on last night’s Democratic debate—perhaps the last of 20—and they aren’t exactly glowing. Words such as grouchy, whining and mockery keep popping up.

Politico’s Ben Smith, for example, says Sen. Hillary Clinton “let loose her disdain for Sen. Barack Obama’s record and her frustration at the media’s coverage of the presidential contest. Obama, in response, accused her of whining about losing political battles, and countered her attacks with mockery.” Clinton’s “jaw set as it became clear that the moderators, NBC’s Tim Russert and Brian Williams, would focus this debate on her, and not her front-running rival. Obama, meanwhile, grimaced in silence when Clinton tried to turn her answers into attacks on him.” Smith recaps a “heated,” 16-minute back and forth on one of Clinton’s areas of expertise, health care, but offers this bottom line: “an event that didn’t appear to change the direction of the hard fought race.”

Clinton and Obama before the Cleveland debate. (Associated Press)

In a similar vein, Salon.com proclaims: “No Hail Mary for Hillary. The final Democratic debate produces no miracles for the grouchy former front-runner. Yes, those MSNBC moderators did seem to like Obama better, but even when she’s right she sounds wrong.” Mike Madden writes that “all the gripes from Hillary Clinton’s campaign about press coverage seemed to be completely, definitively validated midway through Tuesday night’s debate—at the instant when Brian Williams, intending to throw Barack Obama a hardball, instead accidentally cued up a tape of Clinton mocking him, and then asked Obama, ‘How were her comments about you unfair?’” But Madden notes that Clinton already had complained about press treatment, and earned some boos from the audience in response, by complaining that she usually gets hit first with the tough debate questions. For his part, Obama “nearly walked himself into trouble over the Rev. Louis Farrakhan,” the controversial Nation of Islam leader who has endorsed Obama, but recovered when, in response to a challenge from Clinton, he said he both denounced and rejected him.

At the heart of the debate Clinton and Obama had very different tasks ahead of them, writes The New York Times’ Adam Nagourney. Clinton had to question Obama’s qualifications and put the focus on whether he would be able to defeat a nominee as experienced as Sen. John McCain. Obama pretty much had to show up and try to keep his campaign on the right track. And while Clinton took every shot she could to prove her points, at the end of the debate “there was little evidence that Mrs. Clinton had produced the kind of ground-moving moment she needed that might shift the course of a campaign that polls suggest has been moving inexorably in Mr. Obama’s direction for weeks,” Nagourney writes.

Slate’s Trailhead blog provides a useful guide to some of the less-traveled topics raised in the debate. It offers a summary and recommended reading on Farrakhan, on prospective new Russian president Dimitry Medvedev and on earlier pledges by Obama that he would use public financing rather than campaign contributions to finance a general election campaign. All told, Slate’s Chadwick Matlin concludes, the likely end of the primary debates provides “both a relief and a disappointment. Outside of actual primaries, no other event offered more potential for narrative-changing storylines. But debates also invited us media folk to inject too much punditry into the news cycle about moments the general public doesn’t actually care about.”

Veering from the debate action, National Journal’s Charlie Cook, on MSNBC.com, writes about the non-impact of Ralph Nader. Nader may have cost Al Gore the election in 2000, but this year’s presumptive nominees — Obama and McCain — are drawing supporters from outside the traditional party base. Those who do support Nader are probably so far on the edge they wouldn’t have chosen a major-party candidate anyway. “While it is not hard to conjure up many scenarios for Obama to lose, Nader is one of the least likely factors to make a difference,” Cook writes. “Frankly, his candidacy this time around is sad and more than a little pathetic.”

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